That's where Billy Beane found the Oakland A's in October 2001. Conventional wisdom would have moved the franchise to a more lucrative locale, or easier yet, shut the team down.

View full sizeRandy L. Rasmussen/The OregonianStudents graduate during an outdoor ceremony at Franklin High School on June 5 in Portland.

But as recounted in Michael Lewis' "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game," Beane reinvented the game. Diving deep into data, his bean counters discovered how games were won and recruited unconventional players to win them. They slapped singles, took walks, stole bases and turned the A's into persistent overachievers. During 2002-2012, they rank ninth on wins and 24th on payroll.

With schools set to open next month, Oregon's new education chief, Rudy Crew, faces a challenge similar to Beane's circa 2001. The state is coming off a disappointing decade: virtually no gains on national achievement exams. Revenue is weak, pension costs are rising and facilities are uninspiring.

And this spring, with the gloomy budget news as a backdrop, the state called for achievement compacts -- explicit goals on achievement and graduation rates. As The Oregonian's Betsy Hammond reported Aug. 8, most districts promised the status quo, and a few predicted that graduation rates and achievement would fall.

Crew was unimpressed.

He recognizes, as Beane did in Oakland, that big injections of new money aren't coming anytime soon. Yes, the economy will recover eventually. And his boss, the governor, may someday conquer needed tax and pension reforms. But in just a few weeks, the schools will be shaping young people's futures. Today's learners can't wait for a housing-market rebound or a stable eurozone.

Unlike baseball, no option exists to pick the whole system up and move it to Massachusetts. For now, we're stuck with our circumstances. So, how do we make our limited money matter more? How do we become overachievers?

Part of the answer lies in learning from the mountains of data compiled on students, teachers and schools. Everyone in the system, from superintendents to teachers and state analysts to school board members, needs to harness data to evaluate what's working and what isn't -- as well as who's learning and who isn't.

In Salem, policymakers need to understand and address the radically different outcomes across similarly situated and funded schools. For example, a recent ECONorthwest study found that one in five Oregon students is chronically absent -- missing more than 10 percent of the year. But a school-by-school examination showed that schools with similar demographics could have chronic absentee rates as low as 5 percent or as high as 35 percent. Suffice to say, the school at 35 should be learning something from the school at 5.

We find the same phenomenon with college enrollment. Some high schools routinely send more students to college than their peers, after controlling for student income and achievement. Enrollment rates are 10 percentage points higher at top performing schools -- for example, sending 60 percent of their graduates as opposed to 50. They outinspire, outmotivate and outprepare neighboring schools with the same money.

The widely varied performance tells us that some schools have begun to crack the code. Innovators are in our midst. What's their secret?

Clues are rapidly emerging. A pair of Harvard researchers took an unprecedented dive into the inner workings of 35 schools in New York City to see why some flourish and others don't. They surveyed principals, teachers, students and parents; videotaped class activities; scoured accounting records; and checked curricula for rigor. When they matched their school conditions data against outcomes, they concluded that class sizes, teachers' degrees and per-student spending didn't predict a school's effectiveness. Rather, they found the overachieving schools had redesigned their operations to deliver high-dosage tutoring, extended instructional time and frequent teacher feedback.

And the overachievers used student data extensively to guide instructional practice. In the effective schools, teachers monitored student proficiency with well-designed assessments; discussed results with principals and other teachers; and used the data to adjust tutoring groups, assign remediation, modify instruction and develop individualized student goals. In other words, teachers stepped away from the century-old industrial model of education delivery, opened their classrooms and employed data to pinpoint and address the specific needs of each learner.

The lessons from New York, as well as from Oregon's own overachievers, confirm Crew's instincts. Our schools can, and should, aspire to higher goals despite disappointingly slow-growing budgets. Redesigned schools, built on a foundation of data-driven instruction, will require an investment. And there's hope. "Moneyball" converts in the U.S. Department of Education have deemed the systematic use of data a national priority, and they've charged their network of regional laboratories to deliver technical assistance to teachers, principals and superintendents. It's a focus with rare bipartisan support. The state needs to reinforce that priority and expand the federal effort.

Today, the Oakland A's sit comfortably above .500, having won more games than they've lost. While overachievement and data-driven results are their main story lines, Oregon leaders should also note that the A's have not won a World Series in the "Moneyball" era. If we aspire to something more than overachievement -- say, world-class schools -- that'll take some additional money.

The authors are with ECONorthwest, an economic consulting firm with offices in Portland, Eugene and Boise. The opinions expressed here are their own.